Berlin built/built on existing tissue

The empty areas left behind by the “wall” have triggered a long debate on the city and its design. Planners have proposed to build on the existing tissue, an ancient method on which basis cities have been built on top of one another in layers, where buildings have been replaced by new ones erected on the same sediments, on the same foundations, with the same stones obtained from the demolitions. The theme of memory and nostalgia has probably influenced the decisions and the urban choices; in fact, many of the new interventions assume the significance of a repairing gesture which picks up the red thread of continuity which has been interrupted by the brutality of the war. The mechanisms of real estate profit and renovation have often made it necessary to exploit the ground to the fullest, and yet the vertical development retains, within the context of the reconstruction, a sense of permanence which the city cannot renounce.